SDP Security: Prevent 5 Attacks with InstaSafe

Gartner predicts that by 2023, 60% of enterprises would have phased out remote VPNs from their network architecture in favor of SDPs. In that light, it is important to take a look at the concepts, architecture and benefits that SDP entails, vis-à-vis current technologies. Software Defined Perimeters draw on the concept of Zero Trust Network Access, employing a “never trust, always verify” approach to effectively reinforce granular visibility into what is happening across the network. SDPs stress on providing a consistent security strategy of users accessing data from any location in any way.

By adopting an “Always verify before you trust” stance, SDPs flips the entire traditional trust calculation, asserting that all transactions, users, and data, whether on-premise or remote, are not to be trusted from the outset. Using Software Defined Perimeter architecture, InstaSafe Secure Access places the whole enterprise Network behind a dark cloud. Given that hackers cannot attack what they cannot see, enterprise networks come to be secured. InstaSafe Secure Access leverages the concepts of Zero Trust Network Access to provide identity-based granular control. Employing military-grade SDP concepts, InstaSafe Secure Access renders your network invisible to external malicious actors, creating a secure intranet within the internet. By providing granular level access control, ISA allows you to control which device or user has access to what resource, thus preventing your network from a variety of attacks. These include:

Man In The Middle (MITM) Attacks- MITM attacks occur when the malicious actor tends to place himself as a relay in conversations between the user and the application, all the while putting up the garb of a normal conversation. The perpetrator, in this case, can easily alter the real-time processing of data.

How ISA prevents MITM attacks- While VPNs send network traffic over encrypted tunnels to prevent MITM, users may sometimes have to leave these encrypted tunnels while having to access cloud applications. InstaSafe Secure Access, on the other hand, being a cloud-native technology, ensure an always-on deployment, thus extending to the users secure connections, irrespective of their location

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks- In DDoS attacks, malicious actors leverage multiple numbers of fake users and redirect their aggregate traffic to a single website to crash these websites under the weight of multiple login attempts.

How ISA prevents DDoS attacks- ISA focuses on the protection of applications, rather than protecting the end-user. Given that applications are not directly connected to the internet, both the applications and the infrastructure that hosts them are rendered invisible to the external internet, thus rendering them ineffective against DDoS attacks.

DNS Hijacking- In DNS attacks, malicious actors attempt to incorrectly resolve DNS queries, and in the process, redirect users to malicious sites. By gaining access to DNS servers, hackers often exploit users by having them redirect to malicious pages.

How ISA prevents DNS Hijacking attacks- With its unique bundled in secure DNS services, ISA ensures that DNS resolution is performed by its inbuilt service itself.

SSL Stripping- SSL Stripping involves stripping away the encryption offered by HTTPS. By doing so, hackers gain access to the user network and may perform various MITM attacks.

How ISA prevents SSL Stripping attacks-ISA sends data over encrypted tunnels to ensure that the data remains secure from any form of SSL Stripping.

Port Scanning- By using port scanning, malicious actors are able to detect open ports and exploit them to attack vulnerable resources.

How ISA prevents Port Scanning attacks-With ISA’s SDP based technology rendering open ports black or invisible to the internet, the isolation of enterprise network resources from the internet makes it impossible for hackers to exploit open ports.

The above attacks comprise but a minuscule fraction of protection potential of InstaSafe Secure Access. ISA’s SDP based interface is hardware free, zero-configuration solution that accords granular level access control to the enterprise, and is a highly cost-effective, practical, and prudent solution for any organization looking to strengthen their security architecture.